Duke of Cambridge leaves visit to wife as he bids farewell to nanny

The Duchess of Cambridge faces the test of taking part in a high-profile royal
visit on her own on Wednesday after her husband pulled out to attend the
funeral of his former nanny.

Olga Powell served as nanny to Prince William and Prince Harry for 15 yearsPhoto: GETTY

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

9:31PM BST 08 Oct 2012

The Duchess will attend four engagements in Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Stockton-on-Tees without the Duke of Cambridge, after St James’s Palace announced he would instead pay his respects to Olga Powell, who died last month.

The visit will be the Duchess’s first to the North East, where large crowds are expected to turn out and where she is expected to go on a walkabout.

It will be her busiest and most high-profile solo day’s work since becoming a member of the Royal family, and comes less than a month after she had to deal with the biggest crisis of her married life in the row over pictures of her topless which were printed in foreign magazines.

Although the Duke would have wanted to be with his wife to share tomorrow’s workload, St James’s Palace said that “given the significant role that Mrs Powell played in the Princes’ lives, the Duke wished to pay his respects in person”.

Mrs Powell, who died aged 82, was the princes’ nanny for 15 years, helping them get over both their parents’ divorce and the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. She began looking after the then Prince William when he was six months old.

Before attending the Duke and Duchess’s wedding last year, she said Princes William and Harry had been “like my grandsons” and she had done her best to help them have “as ordinary a childhood as they could”.

In turn, the princes treated her like a member of the family, and she attended the Duke’s confirmation at Eton in 2000 and his passing-out parade at Sandhurst in 2006.

She also wrote to Prince Harry shortly before his current deployment to Afghanistan, wishing him luck and admitting she feared for his safety.

The fact that Prince Harry is away in Afghanistan, and therefore unable to attend the funeral, is likely to have made his elder brother even more determined to attend Mrs Powell’s funeral in Harlow, Essex, to represent them both.

Mrs Powell, who had no children of her own, showed the princes one final act of loyalty by asking in her will for donations to be sent to Prince Harry’s charity, Sentebale, instead of flowers at her funeral.

The Duchess began a hectic week’s work on Monday when she and the Duke met recipients of a law scholarship set up in their name in London.

The Duke and Duchess at Middle Temple Inn, central London (Getty)

The reception at Middle Temple Inn was the first of six engagements the Duchess will carry out this week, which will also include a meeting with the England football team today.

The Duke of Cambridge, who is an honorary barrister after being made a Master of the Bench three years ago, and the Duchess, wearing a burgundy outfit by the French designer Paule Ka, met the first recipients of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge scholarship, set up in their name by members of the Temple to mark their wedding last year.

The Middle Temple also awards scholarships set up in memory of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Diana, Princess of Wales, the recipients of which were also at the reception.

One trainee barrister they met was Steven Kennedy, 40, who is pursuing a lifelong ambition to be called to the bar thanks to a £25,000 scholarship.

He said: “They were a very nice couple and I ended up talking with the Duke about our love of motorcycles.”

Mr Kennedy, a former music teacher from Stratford, east London, said: “He’s got a Ducati 1198, which can probably do 170 or 180mph, I’ve got a Suzuki GSXR 600 and I’ve had that up to 157mph on a race track.”

The other student to receive the scholarship was Kerri-Anne Ferdinando, 21, from Great Wakering in Essex, who was taken into care aged 11 and who wants to specialise in family and child law.

On Tuesday, the Duke and Duchess will meet the England team at the opening of the Football Association’s new National Football Centre in Burton-upon-Trent.